desert

Five miles outside Tuba City, you can follow in the footsteps of Arizona’s dinosaurs – literally. Hundreds of three-toed tracks belonging to the horse-sized, plant-munching dilophosaurus have been preserved in the desert floor (which was a flourishing forest when the dilophosaurus were wandering about). At one particular spot, evidence of a prehistoric struggle has been preserved. The ancient tracks tell of a dilophosaurus family meeting a dilophosaurus-eating T. rex. Judging from the fossilized evidence, the T. rex caused quite a bit of damage: there are fossilized smashed dilophosaurus eggs jutting out of the earth as well as the fossil of a downed adult dilophosaurus. But the T. rex didn’t cause these casualties without incurring a loss of its own. Look at the sandstone closely and you’ll see a five-inch claw that the T. rex didn’t mean to leave behind.